Much to the chagrin of many WWE fans, Shane McMahon has been booked as one of the top heels in the company over the past few months. He pulled off two pay-per-view wins over The Miz, pinned Roman Reigns at Super ShowDown, has a posse of Drew McIntyre, Elias and The Revival as his lackeys and has become the focus of both Raw and SmackDown on a weekly basis in his still ongoing feud with Reigns (which this week had Undertaker surprisingly thrown into the mix).
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During his post-event media scrum after Fyter Fest on Saturday night, AEW president Tony Khan made a subtle joke about McMahon’s current booking when talking about the hardcore match between Michael Nakazawa and Alex Jebailey. For those who don’t know, Jebailey is the organizer for the Community Effort Orlando fighting video game tournament that partnered with AEW for the event and was booked into a match with Nakazawa after his planned match at last year’s CEO was cut short due to an injury. Khan referred to Jebailey’s involvement as “nepotism,” then compared it to the ongoing alleged nepotism with McMahon.
“We did some comedy stuff in the matches tonight,” Khan said. “I will say, there was like a hardcore match with a non-wrestler performing and there was an element of nepotism. And you’re going to see that every time we come to CEO, which will be once a year. At least you’re not getting it once a week.”
After having his two-on-one beat down of Reigns interrupted on Raw this week, McMahon will team with McIntyre to take on Reigns and the Undertaker at the Extreme Rules pay-per-view on July 14 in Philadelphia.
Elsewhere during the interview, Khan spoke about the controversial unprotected chair shot to the head Cody Rhodes took from Shawn Spears. It was later revealed that Rhodes did not suffer a concussion from the attack, but did need 12 staples on the back of his head.
“[We] call[ed] a doctor immediately, it was really regrettable what happened. I don’t know if this is the time to go into detail about what happened. But we had taken precautions in the situation, in that specific situation and a doctor was available. Cody does not have a concussion, he has staples, and we’re all very grateful for that.”
“All I’m going to say to you guys on it right now, and I will talk about it more in detail, you could build the safest airplane in the world,” he added. “And if there’s pilot error, there’s pilot error. And it was not good.”
